BY ARUL LOUIS
Opening a new front in the civil rights campaign in the
Amid the national protests against racial discrimination, the California
Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed the case on Monday in a
federal court in the Silicon Valley naming the company and two former managers
as defendants seeking to bring caste discrimination under the umbrella of
unlawful discrimination banned by civil rights legislation enacted in 1964 that
does not specify caste.
The landmark federal Civil Rights Law specifies only race, colour, religion,
sex and national origin.
DFEH alleged that "managers at Cisco's
The court papers seen by IANS said that the Dalit employee's team was made up
entirely of "higher caste" Indians who came to the
The Dalit employee and the manager who supervised him are both IIT graduates
who attended it at the same time, the complaint said, without specifying the
institution.
DFEH Director Kevin Kish said, "It is unacceptable for workplace
conditions and opportunities to be determined by a hereditary social status
determined by birth."
He added, "Employers must be prepared to prevent, remedy, and deter
unlawful conduct against workers because of caste."
In addition to Cisco, court documents list Sundar Iyer, a "distinguished
engineer at Cisco," and Ramana Kompella as defendants in the case.
The person allegedly discriminated against is described as a principal engineer
but is not named and is shown in court documents as "John Doe," a
pseudonym used in the US legal system to protect identities or when a person's
identity is not known.
The complaint said that Iyer told others in the company that the person
allegedly discriminated against was a member of the scheduled caste and when he
confronted the supervisor and complained to the human resources department, a
series of retaliation occurred.
The complaint said that Cisco failed to acknowledge the unlawful discriminatory
practices and did not "take any steps necessary to prevent such
discrimination, harassment, and retaliation from continuing in its workplace."
After an internal investigation into the complaint, human resources employees
"indicated that caste discrimination was not unlawful," DFEH said in
court filings.
DFEH said in its complaint that the Dalit employee of Cisco "was expected
to accept a caste hierarchy within the workplace where Doe held the lowest
status within a team of higher-caste colleagues, receiving less pay, fewer
opportunities, and other inferior terms and conditions of employment because of
his religion, ancestry, national origin/ethnicity, and race/colour."
"When Doe unexpectedly opposed the unlawful practices, contrary to the
traditional order between the Dalit and higher castes, Defendants retaliated
against him," the complaint said.
"Although de jure segregation ended in
The complaint sought to give a sociological snapshot of the Indian community in
the
The DFEH cited a 2018 survey of South Asians in the